I was a Fortune 500 HR SVP for ten million years, but I was an opera singer before I ever heard the term HR. The higher I got in the corporate world, the more operatic the action became. I started writing about the workplace for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1997, but it took me ages to find my own voice. Now I write for the Huffington Post, Business Week, LinkedIn, the Harvard Business Review, the Denver Post and Forbes.com and lead the worldwide Human Workplace movement to reinvent work for people. Stop by and join us: http://www.humanworkplace.com

You Don't Need Permission to Change Careers

A fellow named Jeff came into one of our job search workshops. He said “I want to change careers. I’ve been a lawyer for eighteen years, working for the same law firm the whole time.”

“Okay,” we said. “That sounds great. Do you have an idea of what you want to do next?”

“Yes,” Jeff said, “I know exactly what I want do to.”

Jeff wanted to move into corporate training. He had asked around at his firm and they’d told him they had no use for a person like that. Jeff was surprised, because he spent at least forty percent of his time at the law firm either creating instructional material or delivering training to clients and fellow lawyers. Jeff loved training. He loved writing it and he loved presenting it. He loved the interaction with trainees. He still practiced a lot of law, but he wanted to put the legal work aside and become a full-time trainer and instructional designer.

Jeff had brought his resume with him to the workshop. “Does it have a Summary at the top of it, right now?” We asked him. “Yes,” he said. Jeff read his Summary aloud to the group:

I’m a lawyer with eighteen years of experience on business matters from contracts to key employee agreements, looking to make a move into corporate training.

The whole room got involved in coaching Jeff. “Jeff!” they said, “you’re smart and capable. Why are you asking for permission to make a career change?”

Jeff started his Summary talking about what he doesn’t want to do anymore — namely, practice law. That makes sense, because most of us were raised on toxic lemonade that told us other people have to confer titles and accolades on us. Jeff went to college and then law school. He studied hard and took tests. He passed the bar and became a lawyer. Jeff got promoted several times. All of his commendations and titles came from other people — not from him.

Now it’s Jeff’s turn to step into his new identity. He doesn’t need anyone’s permission. Unlike the practice of law, the practice of corporate training doesn’t require any third-party stamp of approval, and best of all, Jeff has already been training people for over fifteen years!

Jeff rewrote his Summary this way:

I’m a trainer and instructional designer with a focus on translating dense legal or technical material to make it fun and accessible to audiences from raw recruits to senior executives. I’ve been creating instructional materials and teaching legal principles, business methodology and case studies at Whiteshoe and Barnacle and looking for a new opportunity to help people become more successful at work.

Once Jeff revised his Summary, he said, he felt an immediate lift in his mojo. “Duh,” he said. “I was looking for some kindly HR VP to take pity on me and invite me to step over the invisible line between lawyers-who-train and corporate training professionals. I just needed to step over that line myself.”

We call the process of creating a new frame for yourself and gradually letting yourself ease into it “Stepping into your headshot.” It’s a process. It doesn’t happen all at once. Bit by bit we realize that whatever we’re trying to do for the first time in our career change is actually something we’ve been doing for years, only wearing a different hat and in a different setting. Those are the details. When we are driven by our passion for the new career we’ve chosen and our firm knowledge that we’re more than qualified for the new role we’re after, the mechanics of job search get a lot easier.

Whose permission are you waiting for to step into the career you want?

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Great point. It really resonated with me as a former Chartered Accountant. One of the big dangers of the “professional” career path, and the reason I hesitate to recommend it to my children, is that you spend your first years being unconsciously fed the message that there are rules about what you can and can’t do.

One of the key points in the article was “He had asked around at his firm and they’d told him they had no use for a person like that”. This seems to be a common theme in large corporations- I have a lot of friends that have recently moved on because their firms thought they couldn’t offer the career change; the reasons given were, lack of experience, need more time, or simply we need you to stay in the current role. These people always came on top when they quit and found another job. This is perhaps more of an eye opener to firms than just people looking to switch. oh wait! Who from the firm should look into this?

I loved this post, spot on. It’s highly accurate for job seekers in general – and, obviously, career changers – but it also applies to basically every aspect of life. We feel as if someone’s going to tell us exactly what to do and what not to, whereas the decision is in our hands, it’s your our own lives, after all.

I love this!!! I swear all lawyers are miserable. I tell people I’ve been trying to get out of the business since the day I started law school. I am now looking to fulfill my dream of being a writer. I haven’t quite accepted the fact that I can just make the leap yet but this post really inspired me! So off to write on my blog and continue in my book! Thanks!

I wonder if we actually find our calling in our first job… For me it took over 4 jobs and still continuing, to understand what I wanted to do. Somehow, all the ‘risks’ with change of careers (over 2 times), did not deter me and I am happy with all that I learnt over time. To all the people looking to change careers, I would say move ahead and do not care for the advice that others around you will have to offer!!

What a great article. This couldn’t be more on point for those transitioning from the military to the private sector. Even more so for those that may be choosing to focus on more on leadership or management skills rather than the technical skills they learned. I share many parallels with the lawyer in this article, as I’ve been a paralegal for over 18 years and am finishing 28 years in the military. I am also making a career change and am finding it difficult trying to capture what I’ve done to make it relevant to what I want to do. This is a great article to show us how to re-brand ourselves with a focus on what we want to be, not what we’ve been.